1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of quilting, and in particular to a jig for use with a quilting machine which is capable of guiding the quilting machine to stitch any of a variety of preselected patterns.
2. Description of the Related Art
For centuries, quilts have been a common item of bedding and folk art. A quilt generally has a top made of small scraps of material sewn together in a decorative pattern, a plain backing and a filler of cotton or polyester fiber batting. The layers of the quilt are sewn together in intricately stitched patterns. The process of stitching the layers together is referred to as quilting.
Traditionally, quilting is done by hand, either by an individual seamstress or by a group of seamstresses at a “quilting bee.” With the industrial revolution came machine quilting, which is the use of a sewing machine for quilting. Over the years, specialized quilting machines have been developed. In general, these quilting machines fall into two groups, those where the sewing machine is held stationary and the material to be quilted is moved and those where the material is held stationary and the sewing machine is moved.
In the latter type machine, the machine is moveably mounted on a table, and the material to be quilted is supported above the table such that a portion of the material extends through the throat of the sewing machine. The stitched patterns are normally transferred to the quilt from a paper pattern or template by placing the template on the table and manually tracing it with a stylus attached to the sewing machine.
Most previous jigs for use with quilting machines and other similar devices have generally comprised guides or tracks which the sewing machine can follow to duplicate a preexisting pattern. Examples are U.S. Pat. No. 334,275 to Palmer which discloses a Machine for Quilting Bed Comfortables, &c. and U.S. Pat. No. 2,236,421 to Boettcher which discloses an Automatic Fabric Stitcher. These devices, like those that use the manual tracing method can duplicate a design, but cannot create one.
A previous quilting machine which does have pattern creation capabilities is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 437,439 to Lefeber and entitled Quilting Machine. This machine is of the type having a stationary sewing machine and means for moving the workpiece. The workpiece is held in a frame which rotates relative to the sewing machine about a center of rotation which is offset from the needle along an axis. In addition, a cam moves the frame reciprocally along the same axis. By interchanging cams of different profiles, the amplitude and frequency of the reciprocal movement are changed, varying the pattern stitched.